Saints could get to $14.61 million under the cap without restructuring Derek Carr, after Saints salary cap potentially increases by $5M

But it is the way the club has been acting for the the last 3 years. They have spent little in free agency outside of Carr and they have not created all the cap space they could have using restructures and void years. They did a little bit of it with Chase Young because they essentially had zero edge rushers, but that's about it.

Otherwise they have done the minimum necessary to be cap compliant, sign their draft picks, and sign some low prices FAs that they think could be bargains. I mean, they traded their best CB when the other starter was injured. That's not the action of a team that is all in on winning now.

The team has never really gone nuts in free agency and I am not asking them to go nuts now.

We ran it back with a nucleus we believed in and failed in 2022 (while adding guys like Mathieu and Williams among others), then added the league’s highest paid free agent in 2023 (something that shouldn’t just be glossed over), which didn’t work, then last offseason indicated we are now going to dial it back some while even with that declaration, spending money on a few guys that didn’t work out like Wilson, Gay, and Young.